More Serious And Violent Than Funny, The Interview Is Erratic, But (Surprisingly!) Not Bad!

The Good: Character, Much of the acting, Moments of concept
The Bad: Overbearing soundtrack, Repetitive
The Basics: The Interview oscillates between smartly critiquing U.S. the media and intelligence communities and body-type/sex jokes and a violent series of confrontations that are unpleasant to watch.


After all of the controversy and threats from hackers and SONY pulling the wide-release of The Interview (check out the commentary on SONY’s actions here!), SONY has released The Interview in limited release and on-line. Here in Michigan, the local theater Michael Moore subsidizes is one of the theaters that got it in. The controversy means that instead of art theaters showing films like Inherent Vice this Christmas, they are screening what would have been a mainstream comedy instead. And, for all the hype and leaked internal criticism, The Interview is a very mainstream, shock humor comedy film.

And The Interview can only benefit from the hype that surrounded it. It is a Seth Rogen and James Franco film that suffers from a number of issues familiar to fans of the duo’s work; it is short, James Franco is essentially playing a mild permutation of himself (Franco has “serious” and “complete stoner” characters and this is “serious, but with lines that seem familiar from his drug-addled characters), and the humor gets mixed with violence. And, like Observe And Report (reviewed here!) and Pineapple Express (reviewed here!), the violence becomes troubling and is so over-the-top that is sucks the humor that preceded it right out of the film. The thing is, despite the violence and the jokes that don't land, The Interview is surprisingly watchable and is nowhere near as bad as it seemed like it would have been!  Unlike Observe And Report, for example, The Interview does not leave the viewer with a gut-wrenching sense of being horrified and grossed out, despite some pretty over-the-top blood spurts in the film's latter half.

With North Korea getting nuclear missile capabilities, the world is abuzz with journalists pounding the fearmongering . . . except Dave Skylark’s entertainment news show. On the night of their 1000th episode, Dave Skylark and his best friend, executive producer, Aaron Rapaport, break news that Eminem is gay. On the night that North Korea gets full nuclear capability, after Rapaport has had a run in with a former classmate who does not respect his style of entertainment journalism, Skylark’s show breaks a Rob Lowe baldness story. When Dave Skylark learns that Skylark Tonight is Kim Jong-un’s favorite Western-produced show, Skylark and Rapaport decide to try to get an interview with Kim Jong-un. Rapaport is sent to a meeting in the middle of nowhere, China, where the North Korean liaison, Sook, gives the executive producer the terms of the interview. While the terms are not journalistically ethical, Skylark convinces Rapaport to agree to the terms to get the interview at all.

When the duo agrees to the interview terms, Agent Lacey of the CIA approaches Skylark and Rapaport about the opportunity their trip represents: they are wooed to kill Kim Jong-un. While Skylark wants to take the North Korean dictator out in a blaze of glory, Lacey and the CIA train Skylark to deliver a ricin poison handshake, which will kill the Supreme Leader after twenty-four hours. Unfortunately, the poison looks like gum and the North Korean inspectors consume it, leaving the CIA struggling to come up with a back-up plan. They send a drone with a back-up supply of poison . . . which Rapaport has to smuggle back into the room in his butt. When Skylark is greeted by Kim Jong-un, he discovers how Jong-un is basically just a fanboy and when they spend the day together, Skylark bonds with the dictator and has second thoughts about killing him. After Skylark witnesses Kim Jong-un’s temper, he has a change of heart and embraces the mission . . . though the poison is no longer available to the guys.

The reason The Interview is likely to benefit from the hype is that there is a whole audience of people who are likely to see the film based on the controversy alone. Fans of James Franco and Seth Rogen films have never had so much free publicity. For two of America’s biggest comedic box office draws, the publicity the hackers gave the film is more than enough to make up for the drop in revenue for the film appearing on so many fewer theater screens. Unfortunately, the internal criticisms of The Interview that were leaked as part of the hack are mostly accurate. More than the premise problems, The Interview suffers because it is billed as a comedy and it falls a bit short on that front.

At the outset of The Interview, the film is not very funny because it is establishing the premise and characters. In establishing the characters, The Interview works to make Rapaport serious and smart and the movie makes most of its social commentary there. Despite a pretty overtly hilarious interview with Eminem, much of The Interview is concerned with making social commentary before it degenerates into a bloodbath. As a result, the scenes with Seth Rogen’s Rapaport are a smart dose of realism in an otherwise absurd film premise.

The discontinuity gets worse and goes in a different direction at the hour mark. Despite ridiculous dialog about “pulling out,” The Interview turns disturbing when the poisoned military officer starts to die. Putting himself out of his misery as the ricin kills him, the officer blows off his own head and the shot is one that rivals the on-screen carnage of The Walking Dead. After Skylark commits to the film’s premise, having realized he has been played as a tool of Kim Jong-un, the film turns heavyhanded and, frequently, violent.

The issue here is that The Interview starts surprisingly smart, making a subversive and intelligent commentary on the problems with the American media. The culture is groomed to be stupid and ignorant, focusing on media infotainment instead of substantive journalism. The Interview sets out with that in mind and in its latter half it actually proposes the smartest way to combat Kim Jong-un; destroy his propaganda machine. But then The Interview becomes unhinged. The long sequence focusing on Rapaport sticking the drone’s package up his butt and the protracted bit wherein Rapaport and Sook hook up try desperately to recapture a sense of humor for the movie.

All that is undermined by the film’s final half hour. As the actual interview occurs, violence breaks out. This follows on Skylark realizing he has been lied to, which is an insulting and obvious sequence that overstates what is on screen. As Rapaport tries to hold the control room and the interviewers attempt to escape, The Interview degenerates into violence. Despite that, The Interview does what it sets out to do, which is entertain and while it might not be incredible, it is not the complete lemon it might have been made out to be.

The Interview is a triumph of performances for Randall Park and Lizzy Caplan. While the film is a Rogen/Franco vehicle, it is Park and Caplan who get the film’s most substantive moments as actors. Lizzy Caplan has been in a ton of movies and television works, but she has not had such a substantive role near the top of a cast list like in The Interview. Caplan is serious and completely credible as Agent Lacey, even if her part in The Interview starts out as a display of her cleavage (which is addressed in the film). Randall Park plays Kim Jong-un and he gives a performance that is anything but monolithic. Park presents Jong-un as a master of propaganda and, surprisingly, never really goofy.

Perhaps the funniest lingering aspect of The Interview is that Katy Perry is utilized as a weapon. Beyond that, The Interview is a half-boring, quarter-violent comedy that fails to land more often than it hits, but has an ambitious premise and concept that takes a one-line idea and makes it work better than expected.

For other films currently in theaters, please check out my reviews of:
To Write Love On Her Arms
The Voices
Love, Rosie
The Seventh Son
Song One
Match
Vice
American Sniper
Paddington
Inherent Vice
Selma
Still Alice
Predestination
The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies
Expelled
Annie
The Imitation Game
Birdman

5.5/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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SONY And The U.S. Government’s Reaction In Cancelling The Release Of The Interview Proves Throwing Money At The Military Is Money Poorly Spent!

The Basics: With SONY capitulating to (supposed) North Korean threats over its release of The Interview, citizens of the United States should demand their tax money go other places than the U.S. military.


This week’s news has been dominated by stories surrounding the hack of SONY Pictures’s servers and threats surrounding the imminent release of the film The Interview (reviewed here!). Amid all of the stories planted by the hackers and leaked as a result of the hack, there has been one glaring one that has not been reported that I have been waiting for: SONY executives had to know of the risk in making The Interview . . . and they disregarded it entirely.

The Backstory

The Interview is a film starring James Franco and Seth Rogen with a basic premise that Americans visiting North Korea for business are conscripted by the CIA to kill Kim Jong-un. About a month ago, SONY Pictures Studios’s servers were hacked and after digitally-releasing at least four of the studio’s films online, the hackers began to leak e-mails and other private information they stole from the servers to mainstream media and online sources. While North Korea initially denied being the hackers, after the hackers threatened an attack on movie theaters that showed The Interview, the United States government claimed that North Korean sources were responsible for both the threat and the hack. The Interview was subsequently pulled from SONY’s Christmas release roster.

Red Flags In The Backstory

When the SONY hack became a major news story, virtually anyone with any intelligence and insight had to notice some gaping holes in the story of the hack and where blame was being spread. While North Koreans were almost instantly scapegoats for the hack, when they denied involvement, but praised the attack, there were certain questions that remained unanswered in the media. If North Koreans were responsible for the hack, they had to be North Koreans that were fluent in English. Supposedly, the hack occurred on November 24, when SONY personnel turned on their computers to a message warning that more damage to the company was to come. It took about a week for the hackers to start releasing more information taken from SONY.

That makes perfect sense; if you’ve just stolen a treasure trove of information in a foreign language, you need some time to sift through the data to figure out what will be useful (i.e. damaging or damning) in ruining your target. A quick online search estimates that the percentage of North Koreans who are fluent in English range from 1 – 10%. One has to believe that the number of North Koreans who are both expert hackers and fluent in English would be well-below 1% and if the motive was protecting the head of state of North Korea, that number has to be pretty small. So, if the U.S. intelligence community was looking at suspects in North Korea, it seems like their pool would have been ridiculously small.

As information from the hack continued to disseminate, it became more and more clear that The Interview was the source of ire for the hackers. But, even in releasing internal documents with executives panning The Interview showed a level of consideration to what the hackers were releasing . . . and it makes one wonder just what kind of publicity machine SONY actually has working for it.

I write that for multiple reasons, but the chief among them are these: if one wanted to ruin The Interview, releasing it for free would have been a pretty decent way. Hackers who released The Expendables 3 (reviewed here!) online this past summer have been credited with causing that sequel’s grosses to take a noticeable hit. Or, if hackers truly wanted to stop The Interview from being released, the hack of SONY’s servers should have targeted the digital copies of The Interview and destroyed them!

Second, SONY has not leaked what should have been its ace card on the matter: the hack of SONY’s servers and subsequent release of private e-mails illustrates that virtually every conversation at the company is fairly well-documented. What is missing from all the leaked documents are any executives who said anything to the effect of, “Hey guys, I read the treatment for The Interview and I’ve got to ask . . . should we really be pissing off the North Koreans by making this movie?” And the reason the hackers, if they truly were from North Korea, would not release those e-mails is because the two most-probable responses to them are: 1. “Who the fuck cares?! It’s North Korea, what are they going to do to us?!” and/or 2. “North Korea doesn’t have a leg to stand on; just last year, there were two blockbusters that dealt with terrorists attacking the White House” (White House Down and Olympus Has Fallen, reviewed here!). So, SONY’s affirmative defenses to threats against The Interview had to be that North Korea couldn’t touch the U.S. militarily and “we’ve already done movies that attack the heart of the U.S., so it’s not a big deal to have a screwball comedy about killing another country’s Head Of State.”

So, why hasn’t SONY leaked those e-mails to show they are not afraid and/or The Interview is hardly groundbreaking for its potential offensiveness?

The Logical Answer

When the hackers released a direct threat against theaters that showed The Interview, the United States government went from “actively investigating” the SONY hack to actually making statements and throwing around allegations. The intelligence community publicly accused North Korea and, while SONY’s problem has been not poking the bear, the intelligence community has reason to take the opposite tact. In intelligence, one does not give away anything one does not have to: you don’t let your enemy know you’ve cracked their codes and you try to keep your methodology as secret as possible. So, why is the intelligence community now publicly blaming North Korea? That surprised me quite a bit. In fact, while SONY’s approach could easily have been “We were worried about North Korea, until we realized their opinion didn’t matter,” the U.S. intelligence community’s approach should have – at best – been dismissive: “The Interview has been screened multiple places and there have been no attacks on any of those venues, so this seems like a fear tactic to us.”

And, in the e-mails or memos that have not been leaked, SONY executives would be right: North Korea does not have the ability to launch any sort of offensive that would destroy every movie theater screening The Interview. So, it begs the question, why capitulate to the hackers’ demands?

There are only two logical answers to capitulation at this point (considering the film is made and people have already seen it): the intelligence community in the United States has a credible threat or SONY’s executives are so gunshy that they are broken. Fear is a powerful motivator and certainly someone at SONY’s legal department figured out that the liability for attacks to theaters across the U.S. would be astronomical – like, enough to destroy the mega-corporation. But even if such attacks occurred and SONY was sued for liability, precedent shows that free speech is not to blame for violent attacks and the liable parties should be the attackers, not incidental department (suing SONY for any attacks that resulted from releasing The Interview would be analogous to suing the Department Of The Navy for building a base at Pearl Harbor . . . instead retaliating against the Japanese military for attacking the base there).

In Light Of It All. . .

So, that brings us to the second possibility and what it actually means. Right now, the hackers are bullies and SONY (and theater owners) are wusses. If North Korea is the source of the hack and the threat, SONY and theater owners are expected to believe that North Korea has the resources to blow up thousands of targets (the number of screens The Interview would have released on) simultaneously on Christmas Day. According to CIA sources from 2013, North Korean missile technology was only advanced enough to get missiles to the West Coast of the U.S. So, the threat from the hackers was either a bluff, North Korea has advanced its missile technology dramatically within the last year . . . or we are to believe that North Korea has a network of several thousand agents working in the United States who would have delivered the threatened explosives to the theaters when The Interview was released.

And here’s where American citizens should be outraged and have a course of action against the United States government: under any of those circumstances, our tax dollars are just being thrown away. According to usgovernmentspending.com, in 2014, $605 billion were spent on military defense (the deficit was some $483 billion). What the reaction to the SONY hack and alleged North Korean threats tells us is this: that is money poorly spent.

Seriously.

Let’s say the intelligence community is doing its job. The CIA and FBI have identified a credible threat. They say, “Hey, theater owners and SONY, we’d really appreciate it if you didn’t release this movie because North Korea is making threats and they can actually back them up.” That’s the job of the intelligence community. They find the threats and if it’s domestic, they arrest suspects to prevent them. If there were a massive terror network of potential North Korean bombers in the United States ready to actually blow up every theater that screened The Interview (despite the fact that they did not blow up any of the theaters that screened it already for press and potential audiences). Given how the media is all over this story and there have been no stories of arrests or interrogations around the country of North Korean nationals being rounded up by the CIA, logic suggests that the intelligence community discovered that North Koreans were responsible for the hack, but there is no network of bombers in the U.S. ready to blow up theaters here. They turn their intelligence over to the NSA, who shares it with the military.

At that point, the issue becomes a diplomatic and military matter. The diplomats should be saying “Hey, North Korea, you guys can’t just threaten us!” (albeit not the most receptive or rational audience in the world). The military, though, should be saying “before you can launch one missile, we will reduce your arsenal to ashes.” And we have a new Bay Of Pigs or another bloodbath in Asia. The reasons not to pursue a military option are either because it would not work or because it is not going to get the desired results (The Interview, North Korea attacks, the U.S. counter-attacks, China launches its missiles, WWIII, Armageddon). So, what does it mean that it would not work, then? Capitulating to North Korea, if the threats are coming from North Korea, as a military solution is a de facto admission that the U.S. military cannot defend the United States from North Korean missiles.

So then what are we paying our military for?

The United States is a big continent (just drive through Kansas!); taking the United States might be second only to taking and holding Russia in the world. North Korea does not have the military resources to launch a land war to take the U.S. and while it might have some missile resources that could harm the U.S., what are we paying the military for at this point if not to have such overwhelming might that even an egotistical dictator would think twice about attacking us? In order for any threat from the North Korean Head Of State to be deemed “credible,” one has to believe that enough of the high-ranking military officers in North Korea would also be willing to martyr themselves and have their nation reduced to ashes for that leaders vision. Is The Interview being buried because it hits too close to an actual CIA plan to take out Kim Jong-Un? That seems doubtful (the cat’s already out of the bag on the “how” of the assassination attempt in The Interview), so it inevitably points back to the idea that the U.S. military is unable to defeat North Korea without taking what they have already calculated as “acceptable losses.”

North Korea is a nation of approximately 24.45 million people and is about 60% the size of Kansas, located thousands of miles away from the continental United States. If it is a credible military threat to the United States then spending hundreds of billions of dollars on our military is a waste of money. I am a pacifist and I don’t think anyone should die to see a movie, certainly not The Interview (Cheap Thrills, maybe . . . ) and if North Korea could deliver on its threats then that should be taken seriously. But if our military cannot defend against North Korea, that’s just a jobs program that is not advancing anyone’s best interest. The $122 billion dollars spent on military defense (after eliminating the entire deficit of overspending that the military represents) represents $336 each and every American citizen living in the United States could be paid for health care, healthy food, or education. Hell, we could even use that money to go to the movies.

For other reviews and commentaries, please check out my Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Fun Apocalypse Theater Continues With This Is The End!

The Good: Largely funny, Decent direction, Good enough acting and character development, Surprisingly good special effects.
The Bad: Some of the humor does not land, Mortgages some of the real acting talent for cheap jokes.
The Basics: A surprisingly smarter comedy than one might expect going in, This Is The End satirizes the Apocalypse as a buddy comedy with some of today’s most talented young comedy actors.


When it comes to movies, more often than not it seems these days that you get what you pay for. If you’re going to see the latest Transformers movie and you expect Casablanca, you will be disappointed. So, when This Is The End made its debut during Summer Blockbuster Season, it was hard to go into it expecting greatness. And, given that the cast was made up of stoner movie staple actors like James Franco, Seth Rogen, Craig Robinson, Danny McBride, and Jonah Hill, it was hard to imagine that This Is The End would be substantive or more than just mildly amusing. Fortunately, This Is The End is more than just a series of dick and fart jokes which one might expect from this type movie. For sure, there are a number of cum and weed jokes, but This Is The End gets away from that with remarkable speed to become something somewhat more clever and one of the better independent comedies of the summer.

In fact, there is a lot to celebrate in This Is The End, which is very much a “guy’s movie” packed with guys as they rather stupidly try to survive the apocalypse in James Franco’s house. This is basically a buddy comedy with Seth Rogen and Jay Baruchel surrounded by their contemporaries. And while it is very much not appropriate for impressionable children who can’t take jokes about just how much coke Michael Cera could do (we’re talking well beyond lethal levels here!), it makes some decent jokes and points on how the younger generation acts. It is smart enough to be satirical in places and dumb enough to be blandly entertaining to the young audience that will shell out for a summer popcorn flick. And for a movie that is a summer comedy, This Is The End has surprisingly good special effects, making it worth seeing at least once on the big screen.

Jay Baruchel returns to Los Angeles to hang out with Seth Rogen. The two have drifted apart over the years, so Jay is giving their friendship one last chance. Arriving at Seth’s apartment, the two smoke a lot of weed and Jay reluctantly accompanies Seth to James Franco’s housewarming party. There, Jay feels uncomfortable seeing a ton of celebrities, including peers who are not his favorite Hollywood people, most notably Jonah Hill. When Jay tires of the party, he convinces Seth to come with him to the local gas station to get some cigarettes. While there, there is an earthquake and Jay watches in horror as some people nearby are caught in blue beams of light and pulled up into the sky. Running back to the party, Seth denies seeing the people pulled skyward, but soon it is clear that there is something more going on other than a simple earthquake.

When a fiery sinkhole opens up in front of James Franco’s house, the party guests flee (most are killed outright, including Michael Cera who dies pretty horrifically and hilariously at the hands of a light post) leaving only Baruchel, Franco, Hill, Rogen, and Craig Robinson alive in Franco’s house. Waking up the next morning, the guys discover that Danny McBride (who crashed the party the night before) is also alive in the house and has cooked up at least half the house’s food. What follows are a series of short excursions out of and incursions into the house broken up by ridiculous postulating on what exactly is happening in the world at large. Jay asserts that it is the Revalations-style rapture and apocalypse while others guess it might be zombies. Broken up by hilarious moments like Emma Watson making it back to the house and leaving on her own volition, the group pushing Danny out and Jonah Hill getting violated by a demon and possessed, Jan and Seth try to repair their friendship and survive long enough to get raptured themselves.

This Is The End has its moments and once one accepts that everyone in the film is playing fictionalized versions of themselves (unless Michael Cera’s good kid acting career is covering a legendary coke addiction) and buys the premise of the film, it is actually quite enjoyable. This Is The End is funny, though most of the humor is over-the-top gross-out humor. For example, Danny McBride going on at length about all the places in the house he has masturbated and left his semen is initially quite vile. However, the joke is taken to such a length and is such obvious hyperbole that it becomes incredibly funny.

There is nothing funny about rape. Period. There is no “but” after that sentence; rape jokes are universally in bad taste and, as an example, have contributed with constant incest jokes to the destruction of the once cutting-edge and hilarious Family Guy. To its credit, This Is The End avoids making any rape jokes (even the rape of Jonah Hill by a demon is treated with the appropriate horror and obvious distress). Upending the expectations when the film seems to be nearing the bad taste of rape humor, it takes a turn for the clever. When Emma Watson arrives in the house, Jay tries to raise the issue of how the guys will keep themselves in check (in terms of libido), which Watson overhears and misinterprets as a conversation of who will be allowed to rape her first. Never making a rape joke, This Is The End turns to a miscommunication joke about someone protecting a woman from the potential of rape being accused of plotting the very same. It’s very funny and well-delivered by all involved.

On the character front, This Is The End actually has a significant and decent character thread. Jay Baruchel is a friend estranged from one of his oldest friends and Seth Rogen is experiencing the familiar push-pull between his old friends and his new ones (James Franco’s prized artwork in the film is the Seth Rogen hanging in his living room). Amid all of the external conflicts from demons, cannibals, hunger and firepits, This Is The End plays beats that are easy to empathize with by grounding the scenes in Jay and Seth working on their relationship.

On the acting front, This Is The End is good but utterly unchallenging for the performers. All of the celebrities are playing fictionalized versions of themselves and they seem entirely comfortable with that. What stood out was that directors Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg made This Is The End look fabulous. For such a low-budget film, This Is The End never feels low-budget or even remotely cheap.

Entertaining and worthwhile, This Is The End is worth watching for anyone who enjoys humor, even when it pushes the envelope and pokes at the pretenses of the Evangelical Christians.

For other apocalypse films, please check out my reviews of:
Rapture-Palooza
2012
Left Behind: The Movie

6/10

For more film reviews, please visit my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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